"As a child he had been told stories of heaven and hell, of course..."
Michael W. Kinnaird, "Interim," in this issue of Offcourse.

My eyes are
open, I think, but I see nothing. The sun's on China now, but how about
the other stars. Maybe it's overcast. Not a sound either. The birds have
left for warmer parts, truckers may be on strike, but the boiler in the
basement and the habitual hiss and click from the pipes, how strange their
silence is. Yet I don't feel cold. Do I feel warm? No. And not a sound from
my bowels, not reputed for discretion, alas. Am I breathing? Good
question. Empirically, and from lifelong experience, I think I must be,
but I don't feel my own breath. Perhaps oxygen is being pumped directly
into my brain. If I could take a finger to my neck I could perhaps sense
my pulse, but where are my hands? Flat on the mattress, I assume. I also
assume that I could move them, if I wanted to. But I don't; I cannot will
to will it. Can one will oneself to will? Of the corresponding two negative
questions, the one, can one not will oneself to will?, is positively answered
by common experience, and the other, can one will oneself to not will?,
by Oriental meditation practice. But I don't think one can will oneself
to will, unless one has a robust faith in bootstraps. Which brings me to
my feet, I mean to the subject of my lower extremities: either they aren't
there, or I can't conjure up the will to move them. No will and no perception:
I must conclude that I'm no more.

Stultiloquent
fool!

 Says who?

 Who? I, I,
I, me, me, ego, je, moi. My admiration for myself has not abated but increased
with time. Compared with me, the Stagyrite was a pygmy, to say nought of
the Pole who set both poles adrift, or of the Tuscan courtier who spied
the nakedness of Jove's own Artemises. My coevals? Ha! That boasting attorney
from Toulouse. And if Huyghens be truthful (although, in faith, I'd never
trust a man who mourns his wife for longer than one night,) he'll admit
that without my geometry his cycloid would still be rolling in the muds
of mystery. As for those who come later... The Jew from Amsterdam who drew
a few corollaries from, and added a few scholia to, my work, the German
who poked his nose into my papers and his rival, the Englishman who pegged
gravity to inverse distance squared: none of them would have seen a thing
had they not been sitting on my Atlantic shoulders. Closer to your time,
that other Jew from Ulm  ah, the city of my dreams and of my heated room
 the Jew from Ulm who took over without credit or thanks my axiom that
God is not a crook: no, not his nor any other mortal mind has ever measured
up to mine. But Modesty ought to be the cloak of Truth, and so I say no
more.

 Indeed, you
have been called the Father of Modernity.

 That's what
I like to be called: Father. Or better, Mon Reverend Père, the way
I used to address Mersenne.

 Had you mastered
my Method, you'd start by breaking up your question into simpler ones. First,
are you? This, of course, is answered by the very posing of the question,
as I was the first to point out. For note it well, you are so fortunate
as to be talking to the sublime Columbus of the realms of mind, the first
to lay the egg of indubitable thought, then sit on it... Ergo, yes, you
are. Secondly, are you dead? Here all depends on how you understand the
predicate. Suppose I turn the tables and ask you, Am I dead?

 I think so,
mon reverend père: you caught a cold and died in Stockholm, about
three centuries and a half ago, the victim of the early morning habits of
an extravagant queen.

 Don't remind
me of the poxmarked hunchback on a throne, unless you want me to die of
it; if I ever erred, it was in writing that Science is a Woman. Youthful
error, later plagiarized by the mustachioed Teuton who, anyway, wouldn't
have recognized Truth had she hit him right on his ridiculous pompadour.
You say you think I'm dead; what makes you think so?

 Vox populi,
and the encyclopaedias.

 Stultorum infinitum
est numerum; worse still, they publish books. But why credit such fools,
when you can clearly see with your mind's eye and hear with your mind's
ear that I am talking to you?

 Mon reverend
père, I cannot see your face.

 Such Jewish
emphasis on father's face! You ought to wean yourself from that: it is a
more disabling and more ridiculous dependence than motherly teats. Though
Greek Plato, too, believed that certain truths can be communicated only
face to face. Visio facie ad faciam: but what can a face, made of flesh,
underflowed by blood and blemished by rheums and hairy warts, do for Truth,
if not efface, deface and falsify it? Truth must remain faceless: that is
why I've stated, "Larvatus prodeo," and I never forget to put
on a mask before I speak.

 So you haven't
died? I've seen your tombstone in Saint-Germain-des-Prés; I've always
heard that your last words were, "Ça mon âme, il faut
partir". Rightly or wrongly, I deduced you had departed.

 I never said
that.

 Hm... I suspected
that "ça" wasn't quite your style.

 No, I mean
I never said I didn't die.

 In other words,
are you dead? Or are you alive?

 It all depends
on circumstance, intention, and viewpoint.

 I can't believe
it! You, who always argued for, and with, ideas clear and distinct, you
now multiply ambiguities and sound like Anaxagoras waiting to see which
way Schrödinger's cat jumps.

 What I'm saying
is as clear and distinct as when we say that the three angles of a triangle
add up to two right angles, and it is while, and only while, I'm saying
that kind of thing, incidentally, that you can truly say I am alive. For
in truth, insofar as the mind is occupied with eternal thoughts, the mind
itself is immortal. In those rare moments, however, when I'm reminded of
Hélène, or Francine, or of my faithful housekeeper, or my
valet Gillot, or of a particularly tasty omelet, then you can truly say
that I'm dead.

 To live forever,
then, one must live mathematically?

 Precisely.

 And to think
of a unique, individual thing means death?

 C'est ça.

There was silence,
while I was trying to keep all idiosyncratic thoughts away from me, but
they, like ghostly shades thirsty for blood, gathered around, buzzing threateningly.
Presently I called,

 Monsieur Descartes.

There was no answer
to that, nor to my subsequent, repeated calls, Mon reverend père,
Pater reverendissimus, Seigneur du Perron, etc. I had been left to my own
devices, and I became sick with fear. I felt I was rolling and yawing high
up in the rarefied air, without a parachute, and that I could fall at any
moment.

And I did fall. Evidently
that is what must have happened, for I found myself engulfed, like one who
finds himself inside the hollow of a deeply scented wave, a bosom of sweetness
without bound, the eternal woman's lap.

I awoke. My wife told
me that she had heard me screaming in my sleep, and so had taken me in her
arms. I told her I'd been dreaming with Descartes.